


The Deserted

by graveyardparade



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Grief, Recovery, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24250327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveyardparade/pseuds/graveyardparade
Summary: After Order 66, Rex wants nothing more than to be able to save just one brother. It seems an impossible task, secure as they are in the vice grip of the Empire, until he remembers one brother who had escaped the Republic a long time ago.Or: Rex goes to save Cut and finds a safe place to recuperate, because after that finale, Rex deserves at least one nice thing.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 87





	The Deserted

**Author's Note:**

> After watching the season finale, I really just wanted Rex to be able to go recuperate somewhere after all that trauma! Many words later, here we are. As a note, Ahsoka is discussed in parts of this fic, but while you may interpret it to your liking, I wrote the love that they have for each other as platonic in nature.

It’s easier at first.  
  
It shouldn’t be, after everything that happened, after all of the pain and loss, after he’d hurt more than he remembers hurting in his life, not after losing his batch, not after losing his closest brothers, not after losing battalion after battalion, hell, not even after _Umbara_. But it is in its own way. After Order 66, things boiled down to one, specific purpose: stay alive, and do your damnedest to keep Ahsoka alive in the process. Rex isn’t convinced that he would have made it that far without Ahsoka driving him forward, giving him one last person he could try to protect, because if he couldn’t move forward for himself, then he damn well had to do it for her.

  
They stuck together long enough to escape the chaos of Order 66 and to try to get their heads screwed on right. Their goals were simple. Stay hidden, stay safe, try to earn enough credits to keep food on the table and their ship functioning and think about everyone and everything else later. There was nothing to be gained by thinking about it at the time, all of the brothers Rex had left behind to the whims of the Empire, all of Ahsoka’s friends and family and mentors gone within the space of a single day. Their job was to get up and move until they could move no longer.

But they couldn’t stay together forever. They were too conspicuous, Ahsoka had argued, and some had already been catching onto them, the Jedi and the clone, a bit too effective at the odd jobs they’d taken on, a Togrutan woman and a mysterious military man too close to their descriptions for comfort. Rex hadn’t wanted to agree at the time, hadn’t wanted that life of utter solitude unlike one he’s ever known before, but the kid was right. She was right more and more often these days, able to and willing to take point where Rex had faltered, no longer that chirpy little youngling he’d been forced to take into the fold when he first met her. So he acquiesced and after a more prolonged good-bye than was really productive for either of them, they went their separate ways with only the promise that as soon as it was safe, they would be reunited.

After that, for the first time in Rex’s life, was truly and utterly alone. No brothers, no family, no duty. Just a vast, unfeeling galaxy that would gladly see him dead -- that would see to it, if anyone caught onto who he was. So he did the same thing that he did with Ahsoka. He kept his distance and stayed undercover, took jobs where he could get them and hopped from planet to planet, working for nothing beyond trying to survive to the next day. The longer this dragged on, the more he could feel himself diminish underneath it, feeling as though he’s less and less himself as time goes by, wondering what the kriff he’s surviving for if all he has to show for it is this horrible, aimless wandering.  
  
It’s on one of those sleepless nights - though most nights are sleepless these days, truncated with nightmares that have him waking up trembling in a cold sweat, bile on his tongue, robbed of that quiet luxury that was going to the mess hall or walking through the barracks and simply listening to his brothers breathe - that he has the sudden thought: what is this all for? What is he to do? He can’t continue like this. He needs a goal. He needs to be useful. Above all else, he needs to save his brothers. It’s an impossible prospect. Even if he could get one alone, he could never control them long enough to get the chip out. He would be happy with one. Just one brother saved from losing themselves.

That’s when he realizes that the easiest way of getting that blasted chip out of a brother is if it had never been activated in the first place.  
  
He heads to Saleucami the next morning.

* * *

It takes Rex longer than he’d like to admit to find Cut’s farm again. They’d stumbled on it by chance the first time, Hardcase, Kix, Jesse, and himself - don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it - but the part of him that isn’t tired of the sun beating down on him while he’s swathed in suffocating layers of fabric is glad for it. Nobody is going to find Cut’s farm unless they’re specifically looking for it, and if they stumble upon it as Rex did, they’re unlikely to do more than seize its resources. That will be a problem in its own right, but an entirely different one from the staggering possibility that Cut will be seized, his freedom stolen from him in a way that even he cannot rightly imagine.   
  
He prays that they’re still there. They should be. The crops in the fields are flourishing, recently watered, and a quick duck into the barn shows that those blasted eopies have still taken up comfortable residence. He knocks on their front door next, but to no avail. The blinds remain tightly closed, and not a peep comes out. Rex tries again, knocking harder this time. If he had his wits about him he’d realize what an unwelcome sight he is, but he doesn’t grasp it until he hears the blinds creaking and realizes that, almost imperceptibly, the barrel of a blaster is poking in-between them, ready to strike.   
  
Realizing himself, Rex rips off his face coverings and yanks down his hood. “Cut? Suu? It’s Rex! You must remember -- you’ve sheltered me here once before.”   
  
Finally the door creaks open. Cut is there, holding the door open halfway. His right hand isn’t visible. Just out of sight, Rex realizes, eyes flicking over to where it must be, holding a blaster. Cut’s blocking most of his vision, but he can see Suu at the foot of the stairs, a spear held tightly in both hands. If Rex had to guess, the kids were sent upstairs.   
  
“Rex?” Cut looks him over, eyes narrowed, assessing. “I thought we agreed that I was staying out of it.”   
  
“We did. You are.” Rex raises both of his hands in surrender. It goes against every instinct he has with a blaster pointed at him, no matter how unseen, but Cut won’t shoot him. He’s a good man. “ _I_ am. I’m a deserter now. Like you. I’m not here to cause you any harm, I promise.”   
  
Cut opens the door a little wider. His expression is a little apologetic. “Leave your weapons by the door.”   
  
Rex takes both of his blasters and sets them down. He removes the vibroblade he had hidden on him and sets that down too. “Cut,” he says. “Suu. Good to see you again.”   
  
“Sorry about this, Rex,” Cut says. “Can’t be too careful, these days. And we never thought that we’d see you again.”   
  
Rex is about to respond - he’d never thought he’d see Cut again either - when Suu cuts in. “What are you doing here? Are you hiding from something? Is someone after you?”   
  
“No. No, not at the moment.”   
  
She takes another step forward. “Is someone after _us_ ?”   
  
“No. No, it’s nothing like that. Nothing more than what you’re already anticipating, anyway,” Rex says, and he watches her shoulders relax a little, the air easing from out of her lungs. She’s a fierce one, Suu. Rex had once thought Cut careless, selfish for being involved with other natborns like this when he was made for a cause, not made for a particularly long lifespan. But Suu’s as ready to fight for this as Cut is.   
  
“All right,” Cut says in that quiet, calm voice of his, ever the mediator. He picks up Rex’s blasters and his vibroblade and locks them in the safe by the door. Rex can’t begrudge him that. “So nobody’s after you or us. More than the usual, anyway. Let’s all just sit down and talk.”   
  
Suu glances up, noticing two little faces by the stairwell, though they’re a great deal bigger than when Rex saw them last. “I can see that you’re watching, children. Come down. It’s all right.”   
  
“Is that Rex?” Shaeeah exclaims, running down the stairs and closely tailed by Jek. “Your hair!”   
  
“Hey, kid.” There’s something even more bittersweet about seeing the kids, still untouched by the war. “Thought it was time for a change. You like it?”   
  
“It’s all different colours,” Jek points out, a little laugh on his breath.   
  
“Jek,” Suu says. “Shaeeah. If you can’t be quiet I’m sending you back upstairs. Come, come. You look dead on your feet.”   
  
They walk into the kitchen together and Rex, who would stand at attention and with the urgency of what he’s come to say, sinks gratefully into a chair, too tired to argue. Suu leans towards him, voice quiet. “Jek’s right. Your hair’s all different colours.”   
  
“I’ve been planet-hopping. None of the dyes match up.”   
  
For a moment, Rex takes time to just let it all sink in. Shaeeah and Jek look healthy, as cheerful and curious as ever, their questions only silenced by their parents fixing them with a look. There’s something bubbling on the stove. On the couch, there is a blanket, hand-knit from the looks of it. The games table still has the holos up. Suu and Cut were probably playing before he arrived. This isn’t a rest stop, or some filthy campground he can rest his head in. This is a home. It feels strange, surreal, too loud and too quiet all at the same time. For the first time Rex wonders if this is the right thing to do, coming to their home as an interloper, bringing nothing with him but bad news.   
  
But then he looks up from his distant reverie and sees Cut looking at him, eyes soft and gentle in the way that his brothers’ eyes used to be. He remembers seeing them go hard and cold. Nothing Rex does to prevent that from happening to Cut too can be a mistake.   
  
He opens his mouth, but Suu speaks too quickly for that. “What you’ve come to tell us is not that we’re in any immediate danger, yes? We’re safe. You’re just bringing us information. Is that correct?”   
  
“That’s right.”   
  
“Good.” She’s looking at Cut. They’re looking at each other meaningfully. Were they speaking while Rex had gone somewhere else in his mind? He wonders. Or maybe they can communicate with each other just that well. He used to be able to do that with Cody. “Then it can wait. Here is what’s going to happen. You are going to go upstairs and have a real shower. You will leave all your clothes outside the door, and we will wash them. You can wear Cut’s for now. Then you will come down and we will have dinner. _Then_ you will say what you need to say. Are we agreed?”   
  
It’s not phrased as a question. It’s phrased as an order. Rex wonders what it says about him that that’s such a deep relief, to have someone else tell him what to do when the orders are kind and just, nothing but firm compassion in her. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather just hear it now?”   
  
“If it’s waited this long, it can wait a little longer,” Cut says, nodding at him curtly. “Jek, Shaeeah, leave your Uncle Rex be. Come help me finish up dinner.”   
  
So Rex goes. It is an unspeakable luxury to peel off the clothing he’s felt like he’s worn for so long it’s practically fused to his skin and to leave it outside the ‘fresher door as somebody else’s problem. When he looks in the mirror, he thinks he can understand why Cut and Suu had been looking at him like that. He looks like a clone off his rocker, that’s for damn sure. Hair three different shades of black and brown, blond roots already growing in, covered with filth with an expression like a hunted animal. His weight’s seen better days too, his cheeks hollow with it, but he’d lost more weight than he should have before Order 66 was called in the first place. Resources had been running low. Rations were allocated to the shinies, who didn’t yet know how to function on too little food, and Rex found that he’d rather lost his appetite after Umbara.

When he washes himself off, standing underneath the hot spray of water and watching it pool black around his feet, it’s a revelation. As promised, some of Cut’s clothing is neatly folded outside the ‘fresher door waiting for him. It hangs loose on him, Cut’s own frame bigger after years of hard work in the fields and good eating, but it’s soft and comfortable, beckoning him into a life unlike his own.

He feels almost shy coming back down into the kitchen, feet and arms bare, but the Lawquanes greet him with a smile and a table laden with food that smells a lot better than those ration bars he’s been living off of.  
  
“Come,” Cut says. “Sit. Eat.”   
  
Rex doesn’t need to be told twice. There’s a pot of stew with some game meat that’s clearly been cooking all day in a rich broth, root vegetables and some sort of frond bobbing in it, served with a mountain of some hearty, nutty grain that Rex isn’t familiar with, studded with some sort of dried fruit. The Lawquanes serve themselves with the sense that they have this sort of spread often. Rex eats like a man starved. It’s as delicious as it smells. He doesn’t talk much, but he doesn’t have to. The Lawquanes act as though he was an expected visitor and a welcome guest, even after the debacle that was him banging on their door like some sort of masked bandit, and Suu and Cut have a lot to say about the upcoming harvest, the fruits they’ve got preserving in the cellar, the eopie they suspect is going to give birth any day now, some woman that neither of them seem to like in town who nonetheless makes incredible food and is to be tolerated.   
  
It’s not all them either. Jek and Shaeeah are delighted to have someone else to talk to that isn’t their parents and seem to need minimal encouragement from him to talk and talk and talk. Rex can’t tell what’s important of the lot and what isn’t. That’s civvie life, he supposes. Everything is important. Shaeeah got asked out on a date by the boy at a neighbouring farm, but she doesn’t like boys much, she doesn’t think, or at least doesn’t like this one (“probably wise,” Rex says sagely) and Jek has been told it’s his turn to name the next baby eopie and he’s thinking that Lyrre is a good name after the person who wrote his favourite book (“that sounds fine,” Rex says, after he’s asked a third time what he thinks), and both have been allowed to help more in the fields and around the farm and are quite excited about the prospect, probably because they haven’t realized that it just means they have more chores to do.   
  
They’re wonderful. Even with nerves boiling in his gut with the conversation they’re going to have next, it’s wonderful to be surrounded by the simple, friendly chatter of people who love each other, to be clean and warm, with food in his belly and a brother at his side. Eventually their plates are scraped clean, the leftover food is packed up and placed in the fridge for tomorrow and Rex rises with the rest of them to clean the dishes. He doesn’t mean to, but he winds up promising that he’ll look through Jek’s wildlife book with him to tell him whether or not he’s seen any of them personally, and Shaeeah makes him promise to watch her practice with her blaster later because she’s convinced that Cut’s been going easy on her, and he almost forgets himself until Cut and Suu shoo the kids away and look at him with eyes laden with expectation and apprehension.   
  
He doesn’t blame them.When they ask, he tells them. He keeps it to the basics. Doesn’t tell them about Mandalore, or his own place in it. Just tells them about the chip in their brains, all of their brains, that it mandates obedience, that it destroys their free will. He even parts the hair at the side of his head, the hair at the base still so fine and so blond that they can easily make out the scar.

  
“Rex,” Cut says, and Rex’s heart sinks because he recognizes the way he says his name, the same way Cody said his name when he told him that Echo was alive, the same way that he said Fives’ name when he thought the man had gone stark raving mad. “Are you certain?”   
  
“You don’t believe me.”   
  
“It’s a lot to believe.”

Rex squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. He opens them. “I promise you, Cut, on the lives of our brothers, on my honour as a soldier, that this is what’s happened.”

“We were made for obedience, Rex. You know that as well as I do. How do you know that they weren’t simply following orders?”  
  
“I know because it happened to me!” Rex snaps, voice coming out louder than he meant for it to, hands balled into fists in his lap. “I would never have tried to kill my Jedi in my right mind. Never. But I did, and the only reason I’m still here today is because she knew that. Knew that enough to carve the chip out of my head in the middle of an active battle zone. The same goes for my men. They never would have fired at our Jedi. Or at me.”   
  
Cut and Suu exchange startled looks. Suu leans forward. “I think you’d better tell us what happened.”   
  
Rex does. It’s the first time he’s had to say it all out loud -- what happened to him, what happened to his boys, how they’d stopped being themselves, god, what happened to _Jesse_ , poor, sweet, loyal Jesse, the last of his squad to have been there until the painfully bitter end. It’s a hard tale to tell and he half chokes on his own words, hands still curled into fists to prevent them from shaking, throat gone treacherously tight, and he knows that there are tears in his eyes again like he’s some youngling, only he’d never cried half as much when he was a kid. By the end of it, Cut’s migrated to the seat beside him, hand placed reassuringly on his knee.   
  
It feels like an insult, as though he’s a child in need of comforting. But he needs the comfort and it _is_ comforting, so he lets it pass without comment. His pride hasn’t done him any good in the past few months. It doesn’t seem that it will do much good going forward.   
  
Losing his pride is good for one thing, at least, and that’s the fact that when Cut next opens his mouth, all he says is, “I believe you.”   
  
“Good,” Rex says, taking a deep breath, staring down at his lap. “Good.”

* * *

  
He offers to sleep in the barn again, but he’s met with curt refusal. He’s put on the couch instead, given a few old blankets, two to cover his body, and another to ball up and use as a pillow. It’s not the least comfortable place he’s ever slept, that’s for damn sure. But sleep doesn’t come easy and, as he wanders upstairs to use the fresher, he can hear Suu and Cut arguing in hushed voices in their bedroom.   
  
“Of course you have to take it out,” Suu says. “You’ve fought long and hard for your freedom, Cut. You can’t let something like this take it away.”   
  
“It’s too risky. What if something happens? Or if we got caught? What would happen to you, the kids?”   
  
“Don’t think about us for one second. Think about yourself. What do _you_ want.”   
  
“I want what’s best for you.”   
  
“ _Cut_ .”   
  
Suu is a strong woman. But in this moment, she sounds terribly, terribly afraid. Shamed by his own eavesdropping, Rex uses the 'fresher and returns to his bunk, staring at the ceiling and wondering at it, the fact that Cut is faced with something Rex never had: a choice. A family to worry about him undergoing an invasive procedure, an entire unit that would buckle underneath his absence, deliberating on what to do and how to do it. Rex finds that he doesn’t envy the man. He doesn’t think that he’ll be able to sleep, but the next time he opens his eyes, it’s to Cut padding through the room, on his way to make some caf.   
  
“Ah,” he says when he sees that Rex has risen, blinking sleep from out of his eyes. He puts one hand out as Rex moves to get up. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Sit. Rest. I can take care of breakfast.”   
  
“I can help.”   
  
“But you don’t need to. Take the day off for once. I hear that your schedule will be full enough today as it is.”   
  
Cut is right. He can tell that he’s an unwelcome guest in this cozy home now, Suu and Cut filled with an anxious sort of energy that even their children notice, glancing worriedly at them. Shaeeah takes a more active approach, asking if the eopie about to give birth is ill, or if something has gone wrong with the crops. When that gets her no answer, she asks, shyly, if they’re running out of credits. The kids at the neighbouring farm have been talking about it lately, she says. Everyone’s doing poorly. The battle that took place on Saleucami, far from the farm, far from even the nearest village, had taken its toll on the local economy all the way out here, it seems. It’s only when Suu reminds her that Rex had promised to check out her blaster practice that she relents, a gleam in her eye as Suu hands her her training blaster from the safe.   
  
She looks Rex meaningfully in the eye as she hands him both of his blasters and his vibroblade. Jek comes to watch, not yet allowed to wield one of his own. Shaeeah’s a good shot, focused and determined, curious about every part of the blaster, even the bits that Rex doesn’t know much about. When she’s satisfied, they move to sit in the barn on the hay bales - one of the eopies licks his face again, much to his disgruntlement, but the kids just laugh and laugh - and they look through Jek’s book and eat slowly from the lunch they’d brought with them, some tooth shatteringly hard bread and a cold bean salad they all pick at, one bean at a time. Rex speaks slowly at first, voice rough from disuse since he’d separated from Ahsoka, but then he talks and talks and talks, telling them tales of when he’d seen the animals and where, though he leaves out the bits where he by and large kills them. He tells them of the Zillo Beast, and their eyes go as wide as saucers, begging him to tell them more.   
  
They only return in time for supper. Hopefully, Rex thinks, after enough time for Suu and Cut to have it out properly. The kids fairly burst through the door, a veritable whirlwind of excitement. “Mom, Dad, I hit the target right where Uncle Rex told me to, he said I’ve been using the viewer wrong, and -- “   
  
“Did you know that there’s something called a _Zillo Beast_ , I’m gonna call the baby eopie Zillo --”   
  
“-- I’m gonna keep practicing every day and someday I’ll be an even better shot than you -- “   
  
“-- why didn’t you ever tell me that something like that existed --”   
  
“Children!” Suu says, clapping her hands. “Enough! Time for dinner. Go and wash up.” She pinches Jek’s cheek. “You smell like barn.”   
  
There’s only two of them, but the kids still sound like a herd of banthas as they race to the fresher. Rex watches them go, smiling. Moments later, he realizes that Suu is smiling back at him.   
  
“Have fun?”   
  
“Yeah,” Rex says, a little surprised to find that he’s telling the truth. Fun isn’t much of a priority these days. In fact, if you asked some of his men back in the day, they’d say Captain Rex doesn’t _have_ fun. “They’re good kids. Smart. You’ve raised them well.”   
  
“I know,” Suu says with a cheeky little smile, but her expression quickly sobers. “Thank you for taking care of them. Cut and I… we needed to talk. About what happens next.”   
  
“I figured as much.”   
  
Suu looks at Cut. Cut sighs. “I’d be lying if I said that you brought us good news, Rex. You risked your hide getting it to us, though, and we’re grateful. It’s gotta come out. I think we knew that from the beginning.”   
  
Stars, but Rex is glad to hear that. He doesn’t know how to voice his relief, nor how desperately he’d wanted to help them preserve this, this fragile little happiness that at least one of them has found. Instead, he does what he’s good at, and that’s planning. “Good. I can ride into town tomorrow and do some recon work. It’s an invasive procedure, but it shouldn’t be too difficult or take too long with the right medic droid.”   
  
“You will do no such thing. You can tell me exactly what we’re looking for, but I will be the one to ride into town,” Suu says, stopping him there. “We’ve already discussed it. I’m the least likely to draw attention of the three of us. You will stay here and help Cut look after the farm and the children. We’ve taken too much time talking about this as it is. We cannot afford to lose any more days.”   
  
“I’ve evaded suspicion for this long.”   
  
“And you will evade it longer this way. I am capable of this much. He is my husband and I will take care of him, as he has taken care of me.”   
  
Rex can recognize an unwinnable battle when he hears one even if he’s not happy about it. “I read you loud and clear. Cut? You’re awfully quiet.”   
  
Cut offers him a thin smile. “Never thought I’d be getting brain surgery, is all. They found a way to sink their claws in us even if we did desert, eh, Rex?”   
  
“Kriffing longnecks,” Rex says.   
  
“Kriffing longnecks,” Cut agrees with a bitter laugh.   
  
“You know that if there’s anything I can do that’s within my control to help, I will. I want -- “ Rex’s voice is awkward, stilting as it always is when he speaks on matters from the heart, especially when he’s not in the midst of pouring out his heart. “I want you to be able to continue. To live like this. To keep this life.”   
  
“I know, brother. I know.” Cut closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he’s smiling again, chipper as he claps his hands. “Enough of that. We’ll deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes, no matter what it brings. The kids’ll be down soon. For now, let’s eat.”   
  
Sleep that night is considerably harder out in the open as he is, too twitchy and paranoid, the deep exhaustion having been lifted from his bones enough to make sleep a stranger to him. The Lawquanes don’t look as though they’ve fared much better the following morning, though they take one look at him and unanimously decide on the spot that he’ll need a more secure place to sleep. Before Suu heads out on the Lawquanes’ only speeder they set up a room for him in the cellar, nothing more than a sleeping mat they’ve managed to squeeze in there. It’s dark and claustrophobic and cold, and Rex finds himself surrounded by jars and jars of preserves and pickles, and it’s absolutely perfect.

* * *

  
  
Tending to the fields is hard work. Rex’s shoulder hasn’t been the same since an errant blaster bolt had caught him in the midst of Order 66, himself and Ahsoka schooled in basic field first-aid but equipped with neither the equipment nor clarity of mind to mend it as they should have, and it aches something fierce. He refuses to own up to it, working it to a point that Kix would doubtlessly scold him for. Even so, there’s something satisfying to the work. It’s arduous work, tedious at best, but Rex isn’t used to this sort of thing, work where you can see the results with your own two eyes, with nothing to do with fighting. There’s no bodycount, no medical documents to read, no reports for him to write after a long battle. There’s just a swath of field that was once covered with crops, and now it isn’t.   
  
There’s something to it, this life that Cut has chosen, where he grows and nurtures instead of kills, even the crops that they’re tearing away going towards feeding and nurturing some other family. Rex wonders what would have become of his men if they’d been allowed to have a choice, who or what they could have been after the war as he’d always thought about, who or what they would be if they’d never had to fight in the first place, all the spectacular people they could have been, all the things they could have done.   
  
It’s a dangerous road to go down because as soon as he thinks about his brothers - quick, clever Echo who could have programmed magnificent things, Fives who had enough power in him to fight for the little guy and then some, Kix a better medic than most civvies could ever hope to be, Cody too stoic and straitlaced to be in any position other than in command of an army, Jesse so staunch and loyal that he’d always remain by his side - he thinks about them not as they were, but as they are, brothers with their heads slackened and mouth gaping wide, the air stinking of blood and viscera, their eyes unseeing, twisted and broken by what had been done to them despite the fact that they’d never been anything other than good, honest, loyal men, how that had worked against them --   
  
He takes a deep breath. He breathes in dirt and grass. He stomps his feet. The ground yields beneath him. The pain in his shoulder has gone from a dull ache to a stabbing pain and in his own way, he welcomes it. He sees sprouts coming out of the ground elsewhere, crops still unharvested. If he listens carefully, he can hear the kids chattering from the barn, too loud for their own good as they shovel manure. He hears birdsong. He breathes in, breathes out. It doesn’t matter what he might wonder about. It doesn’t even matter that so much of him believes that others should be standing here than him, that they had more creativity and ambition and goodness and bravery in their heart, that they could have done more than Rex, who had never wanted anything more than to be a soldier and could never think of who or what he was beyond that. They’re not standing here. He is. He’s here. Not there. He’s _here._

He gets back to work. If Cut saw his lapse, saw him pause in his work to squeeze his eyes shut and tremble and have to take stock of the world again to feel as though he’s still here, he’s still a person, he’s still Rex, then he doesn’t mention it, and Rex is grateful for it. When they return home, Cut tosses him a bag of frozen Salthia beans for his shoulder and, aside from the children, they sit in mostly companionable silence for the rest of the evening, both wordlessly worried about Suu.  
  
They didn’t have to be. The kids are already in bed by the time they hear the speeder roll up to the front and Suu walks in, looking weary but no worse for wear.   
  
“Hello, you two,” she says, putting down her bag. “The children are in bed?”   
  
“Fed and watered and tucked in,” Cut says, giving her a kiss. They’re not showy, but Rex averts his eyes to give them a moment’s privacy after what’s been a long day for them both.   
  
“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I found someone with an advanced enough medical droid to do the procedure. They’re used to being discrete.”   
  
“And the bad news?” Cut asks.   
  
“The bad news is that it comes at a price. There is an underground shipment of medical supplies coming within the next couple of days. They believe that they may be intercepted. By who, they didn’t say. They wish for protection for their trouble.”   
  
“A security detail then,” Rex says. “That can be arranged.”   
  
“You’ve already done so much by warning us about this… thing in Cut’s head.”   
  
“And you’ve welcomed me into your home twice now.” Rex’s expression softens. “I will do whatever it takes to get that chip out of as many brothers as possible.”   
  
“So long as that bum shoulder of yours doesn’t get in the way,” Cut points out.  
  
Rex rolls his eyes. “It won’t. It’s just a little sore. Besides, most men fight with one blaster. I fight with two. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got the advantage right out of the gate.”   
  
“Then it’s decided. Rex and I will go on security detail for these people. After that, we’ll see what happens.”   
  
They exchange more information a while longer while Suu eats her supper but when everything that can be hashed out has been hashed out, Cut says, “Suu? I’d like to have a word with Rex.”   
  
“Ah,” she says, giving him a tired smile. “Man-to-man?”   
  
“Brother-to-brother.”   
  
“I’ll see you upstairs. Good night, boys.”   
  
Cut gets up and, without asking, pours them each a couple of fingers of some dark liquor he had stored underneath the sink. He sets one down on the table for himself, then slides one over to Rex. Rex looks at it with the wariness of a man who knows that if he crawls into the bottom of a bottle now, he’ll never crawl out.   
  
“What did you want to know, Cut?”   
  
“The surgery,” he says, tapping the side of his head. “What’s it like?”   
  
“With an advanced enough medical droid, it should be quick and relatively simple. The hardest part will be detecting the damn thing. It’s a quick incision and an isolated ablation.”   
  
“How soon will I be able to get back to work?”   
  
Rex shifts a little uneasily. He’d never stopped. He’d never had the opportunity to. It’s all a bit surreal, seeing how an ordinary person reacts to potentially life-changing surgery, with worry and care from his wife, time to prepare and time to plan for the aftercare. “I’m the wrong person to ask. Underneath ideal circumstances, I imagine you should rest for a few days.”   
  
“There was a lot of pain?”   
  
“I had an absolute bastard of a headache, I can tell you that much. But I didn’t have mine underneath… ideal circumstances. If you can care for it properly, you should do your due diligence.” Cut isn’t afraid of pain. Rex knows that. But he’s looking at him carefully, almost warily.   
  
“Did it change anything else about you?”   
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
Cut leans back in his chair, eyes looking at something far away. “This chip. It’s been in us since birth. Has having it out changed you at all? Who you are, as a person.” He takes a sip from his glass. “Our past is always going to be part of us. I know you think I forget that sometimes, having been here for so long, but where we’re from is still a part of us. What we’re dealing with is just more literal than how I usually think of it. Leaving the army changed me. This is in our brain. Taking it out may change us. You’ve changed.”   
  
Somehow, that smarts. Rex knows that he’s changed, far from the proud, inflexible captain he’d been when he arrived. Some of the ways that he’s changed are good, growth over the years of battle, learning where to bend, learning how to say no. Some of the ways he’s changed haven’t been so good. He looks in the mirror most days and sees a hollow man staring back at him. A stranger wearing his brothers' faces. “You think it’s because of the chip,” he says tersely.   
  
“I think it’s a possibility. And it’s a possibility that I need to know about now. I have responsibilities here, Rex. I need to be a good husband to Suu, a good father to my children. In all likelihood that’s not it. What you’ve been through, Rex -- I can’t imagine. That would change any man. But I don’t know which is which.”   
  
Rex wouldn’t make a good husband or father. Not as he is now. Cut sees that in him. That’s never been what he wanted anyway, no matter what Cut read into him so long ago. “I can’t separate the two. They were linked. It might change you. It’s possible.” His lip curls, teeth showing in something raw and unpleasant. “If you’d rather keep that thing in your brain than become more like me, that’s your choice, Cut. We’re done here.”   
  
As Rex stands to leave, Cut grabs at his wrist. Rex shakes him off, eyes narrowed, more angry than is truly deserved. He can’t seem to help himself. “Rex --”

  
“I didn’t have a choice,” Rex spits. “It was change or die. For what it’s worth, I chose to live. You still have your family. I lost mine that day. All of them. Do you understand that?”   
  
“I do.”   
  
“I don’t think that you do,” Rex says, listening to himself get louder, feeling a little faint. “I think there’s only one other person in the galaxy that understands, and she’s not here. You deserted, and you found Suu. You found a home. The rest of us, any of us who managed to escape the order, all we got was a galaxy that cares as much about us as they ever did. They don’t _care_ , Cut. So don’t you sit there and tell me all the ways I changed to survive and blame it on some kriffing chip they put in us.”   
  
Cut’s eyes are large and dark. They’re sympathetic too. It makes him feel even angrier. Stop looking at me with that face, he thinks. Like you’re them. You’re not them. You’re none of the people I miss. His heart roars in his ears.   
  
“I am me. With or without my chip. That’s all I’ve got left. And you’d better get yours out while you still have something left to lose.”   
  
“I meant no offense. I had to know. Do _you_ understand that?”   
  
“I understand you plenty. I’m going for a walk. Don’t worry,” Rex says, grimly responsible, even in the midst of a fit of pique, “I’ll be back in time to help with the fields tomorrow.”   
  
Rex never got to be a teenager. He’s getting a taste of it now, stomping out of the house, somehow furious with Cut for wearing the same face the both of them had worn for their entire lives, for looking at him as though he understands when he doesn’t, for being the one he’s saving first when it should have been Fives, it should have been Cody, it should have been Kix, it should have been Jesse, it should have been those shinies who died in the wreck before even hearing the order, busy steering the ship, it should have been anyone other than him.   
  
He doesn’t know how long he walks around the farm, nor how long he stops to look up at the stars, shoulders trembling. He misses Ahsoka. He misses her terribly. They’d had some sort of connection after she got the chip out of him. He wonders if she can feel what he does in the same way she used to feel what General Skywalker was feeling, as she’d confessed she did in those last terrible moments. He hopes not. She doesn’t deserve to feel this, this helplessness and roiling confusion and anger and sorrow intermingling as though he’s not fortunate in his own way to be here, fed and clothed, shelter provided to him without question, the company kind and understanding. He hopes Ahsoka has found half of what he has.   
  
His anger chills with the growing night and, arms wrapped securely around himself, he makes his way back to the house. He has half a mind to just sleep in the barn when he notices a slip of white on the Lawquanes’ doorstep. It’s in Mando’a, of a sort. It’s not really Mando’a of the sort proper Mandalorians would recognize, but what it’s become, passed down from brother to brother, little puns and jokes slipped in there with about another half dozen languages that they know. He doubts it would be properly legible to anyone but another clone, but the message is simple: string in the drainpipe, reach as far as you can, tug on it, and that’s where you’ll find the spare key. The door creaks quietly as he swings it open, though he tries to make his footfalls as quiet as possible as he makes his way down the creaky stairs of the cellar where his bedroll is waiting for. When he finally settles in, he finds that he feels awful about all that. None of it was Cut’s fault. He’s about to get something carved out of his brain and he’s scared, like any ordinary man should be.   
  
He covers his face with one hand and lets out a quiet groan. Eventually, he sleeps.

* * *

  
When he comes up the next morning, it’s early enough that only Cut is at the table. Rex’s brow creases. “Cut, about last night --”   
  
Cut holds one hand up. “It’s fine. I don’t want to hear your apologies.”   
  
“You’re getting them anyway. I was out of line. I apologize.” Cut nods, and Rex sits down across from him. He studies his hands, dirt still buried underneath his nail beds as they have been for the past day. His voice drops in volume as he says, “A brother of mine discovered the chips before they were activated. The Kaminoans had an excuse for them. They said they were put in there to encourage obedience. They also said that they were there to curb our natural aggression. Apparently it was a big enough problem that everyone believed them. I don’t know if…”   
  
He trails off. It’s a possibility, he knows. He’s been so angry, these past few months. Sometimes it’s gone altogether and he just feels empty and tired, but other times, like last night, it boils up in him so much that he can’t help but let it out one way or another. Rex looks up when he realizes Cut hasn’t responded yet, but it seems as though Cut had been waiting for him to look at him.   
  
“Do you want to know what I think, Rex? I don’t think it’s the chip. I think you’re a human being who’s been through more than anyone could imagine. I saw you… lose yourself there, in the fields. I did that too, when I first met Suu. After I lost my batch It’s normal. I just worry. Suu won’t let herself worry, so I have to do enough of it for both of us. I think if I change into someone a little more like someone who’ll take Shaeeah for blaster practice and who listens to Jek talk about his animals all day, we’ll be just fine.”   
  
Rex swallows past a lump in his throat. He still feels shame, for feeling that way, for having it been noticed, but he also feels terribly, impossibly grateful. In lieu of words, he just nods, a quick, jerky thing.   
  
The moment is interrupted by Suu and the kids barreling down the stairs. Suu is swinging a bag from her wrist, and she brightens when she sees them already at the table. “Oh good, you two are here. Rex, I forgot to mention, I picked something else up while I was in town yesterday. Look!” She holds up the bag. “Hair dye! We’ll get you looking less like a striped loth-cat yet.”   
  
“I wish I had hair I could dye,” Jek says mulishly. “It’s so weird watching Dad do it.”   
  
“For the hundredth time, I don’t dye my hair. I’m a natural redhead,” Cut says with a wink, and Jek wrinkles his nose with a stifled giggle.   
  
Just like that, the tension is gone. They dine as a family before they disperse, getting on with the day’s work. There’s work to be done, fields to be tended to, eopies to be cleaned up after and fed, with the pregnant eopie needing more monitoring as her term nears its end.

That night, Suu insists on helping him dye his hair - “I only get to play with human hair so often,” she says brightly when he tries to tell her that she’s done too much, “and I will not let you deprive me of this” - and her hands are firm and gentle as they run their way through his hair. It’s more soothing than he’s willing to admit, but he’s glad he submitted himself to her care in the end. When his hair is dry, it’s a shiny brown, lighter than the hodgepodge he’d had before, still finer and straighter than that of most of his brothers.   
  
“This way it won’t be quite so shocking when the blond grows back in,” she says, one hand on her hips. “I did a pretty good job. All the same, I think I prefer the blond.”   
  
So, Rex finds, does he. “Thank you, Suu.”   
  
“It is nothing,” she says, and claps him on the shoulder.   
  
That’s how Rex spends the next few days. He wakes - or doesn’t, if sleep didn’t come to him easy - comes upstairs, has some caf with Cut and Suu while the kids eat, and tends to the fields. There is a midday break where they’ll lunch together or separately, depending on how engrossed they are in their own tasks. In the afternoon, he helps muck out the eopie pens, though he has not yet mustered up the confidence to milk them, which the kids handle with an easy grace. They chatter his ear off in the meantime, stopping only to badger him for stories, both a little skeptical that he and Cut really did only meet for the first time not so long after he’d met them. They go home, they wash up, they cook, they eat, they sleep.   
  
On the evening of the fourth night, Suu tells them that the job is the next morning, the deal taking place at the crack of dawn. Rex swaths himself in the uniform that conceals his face from what somehow feels like a lifetime ago even though Rex has barely been with the Lawquanes for a week. Cut does the same. Luckily, going incognito for protection duty is hardly noteworthy, and the people they meet at the shipment dock seem largely glad to see them.   
  
The deal goes sour, as everyone involved suspected it would. There should be a bigger story to tell about that, of a dashing fight and a daring rescue, but truth be told, Rex and Cut are far more capable warriors than the likes that these dirty backwater deals usually see, and they dispatch the people trying to scam the locals out of their medical supplies with quickness and ease. Cut’s long hours in the field have made him strong and nimble, and Rex -- well, Rex could fight them in his sleep. It’s not his ego talking. It’s the fact that he went from commanding some of the most hard-won battles in galactic military history to taking care of some people who don’t want to give locals bacta because they want to scam them out of a few credits.   
  
It feels good to fight beside a brother anyway, and even if they hadn’t been promised that Cut would get something out of this, it’s something Rex would have gladly done for nothing. It’s not a good attitude to have in this galaxy, especially not when he started running low on credits but sometimes all he wants is a simple fight, where he has no regret for who he shot at, where he can fight beside someone he trusts.   
  
He and Cut are in a merry mood as they make their way back to the farm, chuckling about how terrible the scammers were at fighting, Rex enjoying the breeze whipping past them as he sits in the passenger pod of the speeder and as they disembark in the heat of the mid-afternoon sun, they see Jek tearing towards them.   
  
“Dad! Dad! Uncle Rex!”   
  
Cut hops out, looking alarmed. “What is it?”   
  
Jek’s face breaks into a toothy grin. “Zillo’s here!”   
  
True to his word, once Cut and Rex strip themselves their overclothes and follow him into the barn, a baby eopie is in the hay, long legs splayed out underneath it, fur still warm and damp. Suu is there, mopping some sweat from off her brow with a bandanna, and so is Shaeeah, cooing at the thing.   
  
“Well I’ll be,” Cut says, hands planted on his hips. “That’s just like the old girl. Right on time. Rex?”   
  
Rex has never seen a baby eopie before. In his line of business, he usually doesn’t see a baby of any species, not unless he’s racing to get Kix for medical aid for a pregnant civilian, or if they’re rescuing one from the wreckage of war. He has no fondness for eopies as a species, but even he has to admit that this one’s pretty cute. Shaeeah beckons him over, scooting aside to make room for him.   
  
“Mom let me help. It was pretty gross. If you wash your hands first, you can help.”   
  
“I think Rex and your father have had a long day already,” Suu says, knowing that they’d headed out well before dawn. “It went well, then?”   
  
“I think you had a more exciting day than we did,” Rex says. “I would -- I would like to help. If that’s all right.”   
  
“Of course,” says Suu.   
  
It feels strange, going directly from a fight to this sort of work, but Rex is good at following directions and Shaeeah is, it must be said, extremely bossy. He’s glad for it, having no experience with this himself. The calf’s eyes are large and dark and rimmed with lashes, his gaze upon them docile as they towel him off. Rex cradles his head as he feeds him from a bottle. It’s filled with special things, Shaeeah tells him, so that the calf can grow big and strong. After that, the eopie takes a few staggering steps towards its mother to feed properly, his mother lying on her side and accepting her nursing calf without issue.   
  
“He’s not gonna get as big as a Zillo Beast,” Jek tells him, sounding a little disappointed. “But I don’t think Mom and Dad would let us keep a Zillo Beast anyway.”   
  
“I think I like this one more anyway,” Rex tells him. Everything feels gentle here, as though it’s muffled by cotton. In a way, it’s as satisfying as fighting alongside Cut did. To grow and nurture, not to kill. He strokes Zillo one last time before he leaves, a firm hand running down Zillo’s spine, down to his stubby little tail, feeling strangely at peace.   
  
That evening, Suu tells the kids that their father is going in for a minor surgery next day, and that Rex will be in charge of looking after them and, in turn, that they will be in charge of looking after him. They absorb this with the wide-eyed calm of kids who are trying to mimic their parents’ sense of steadfast sureness, projecting a united front that everything will be okay.   
  
“I had it too,” Rex tells them. He sits on the ground and lets them comb through his hair until they find his scar, a thin pink line across his temple. They stare at it for a while.   
  
“I’m all right, aren’t I?” He says.   
  
Jek traces his scar with the tip of his finger over and over, trying to absorb what’s going to happen. It tickles, but Rex tries to stay as still as he can. “Yeah,” he agrees. “You’re okay. Is that why you came?”   
  
“Yeah. I came to help while your Mom and Dad deal with this.”   
  
“I thought you were coming because you were in trouble again,” Jek says lowly. “You seemed scared. And sad. I thought maybe we were gonna get attacked again.”   
  
Rex absorbs this. He was scared and sad. He still is, though he wouldn’t put it in such simple terms. But he feels it less now, in moments. Moments are more than he had before, though. He’s not sure what to say. “You won’t be if I have anything to say about it,” he says instead of addressing the other bit, and rises to his feet. “I’ll leave you lot to it.”   
  
They’ve welcomed him into their home, and they would never ask him to leave, but Rex knows when a family needs to approach something that seems large and terrifying together. He sits curled on his bedroll, idly scrolling through a couple of holonovels they had loaned to him - when he showed interest, every one of them had sent over a file of their own choosing - though he can’t maintain focus on them very well right now.  
  
It’s a couple of hours later that Rex hears a knock on the cellar door. He sets the holopad aside. “Come in.”   
  
Suu comes in and, without preamble, sits down beside him. “Tell me what the surgery’s like. Tell me my husband is going to be all right.”   
  
Rex is quiet for a moment. “I had the surgery in the middle of a firefight. I couldn’t tell you what Cut’s experience will be like. When I had mine, I was already underneath its control. I was electrocuted and sustained a head injury before I even went through the surgery. I was knocked unconscious, not drugged the way Cut will be. And as soon as it was done, I had to be on my feet again.” He looks at Suu. “The way you two are going about this is better. He’ll undergo the procedure properly. Then he’ll come home to heal with his loving family. He’ll be fine.”   
  
Suu hugs her knees to her chest. “Ever since I met Cut, I’ve been in danger of losing him. He told me first, that the Republic would be looking for him. He was so scared when I found him. So lost. Then he told me of how you clones age. How if I were to keep him in my home, in my life, it would not be for as long as I would have any other man. And now this. I do not understand why the galaxy is like this, Rex. Why we cannot simply farm and raise our children in peace.”   
  
“After this, maybe you can.” He looks at her face, drawn with worry. “He’s very lucky to have you.”   
  
“I am very lucky to have him. He’s a good man. He’s kind. Gentle. He treats me well. He treats the children well. I could not wish for better. I learned long ago that life isn’t fair. I had been on my own long before I met him. I just wish that life were… easier. For him. For you. You were not in pain, afterwards?”   
  
“My head hurt. I'd get dizzy sometimes, over the next few days. More forgetful than normal, perhaps. But Cut’s strong. He’ll be fine.”   
  
Suu slowly unhooks her arms from where they’re hugging her legs to her chest, letting them relax out in front of her. “I did not like my first husband. He was cruel to me. He was cruel to the children. He had no reason to be. It was no fault of ours, and he did not have a hard life like you did, like Cut did. I was young and foolish. I thought perhaps he would change. But all his trouble came from within. Eventually, I was finished. I said, enough! I can handle this life on my own! And I did. I could. I did it well too. When Cut came, I thought, enough! Enough people in our lives! We can do this on our own! We do not turn away any soul in need, but we do not need to keep him here either. But Cut was different. All of Cut’s problems came outside of himself. You have all been the same way. From hard lives. But gentle. Kind, in your own way.” She looks at him. “I am sorry for what happened to you.”   
  
“Me too. I hope this is the last of it. That after this, Cut’s ties to the Empire will be severed. After this, he’ll just be a man. Same as any other.”   
  
“But that’s not what you feel that you are. A man, same as any other.” She’s right. Maybe it’s because when it came to leaving the military, that was Cut’s choice. It wasn’t Rex’s. Rex doesn’t say anything. “You said that you got yours removed in the middle of a battlefield. How?”   
  
“My Jedi. She knew that something was wrong. Up til the very end, she tried not to kill any of us. When it came to me, she chose to save me.”   
  
Suu’s eyes are soft. Sympathetic. “It is never easy to be the one that’s left behind. You love her. Your Jedi. And she must love you, to go through such great lengths to save you.”   
  
“I do. She was a child when I first met her. I watched her grow into a warrior in her own right, proud and strong. I told you before, when I left, that I had family elsewhere. She’s part of mine. I wouldn’t be here without her.” It is with humble vulnerability that he adds, “I wouldn’t be here without her in many ways.”   
  
“Cut never spoke of his Jedi with such fondness. But I suppose they are not all the same. This Jedi of yours, is she…?”   
  
“No. No, it was just too risky to stay together. We’ll see each other again. Someday.”   
  
“Good. I am glad that she saved you, Rex. All of those men deserved to be saved, but you did too.” Suu brings a hand up to cup at the side of his face, as gentle as her hands through his hair, and rubs her thumb against the scar on his temple. “Thank you for coming back to save my husband as well.”   
  
“He deserved to be saved,” Rex says.   
  
“It took him a while to understand that, I think. Eventually you will understand too.” She gets up in one fluid motion and stops at the foot of the stairs. “Good night, Rex.”   
  
“Good night, Suu. Get some rest. Cut will need your strength.”   
  
She smiles at him. “And he shall have it.” 

* * *

  
The surgery goes well.   
  
Rex is an awkward observer beforehand, watching as Jek and Shaeeah hug Cut and Suu tightly and pretend as though they’re not petrified for their father. They’re abnormally quiet for the rest of the day underneath Rex’s watchful eye, but they keep their heads down and work like their parents told them to. The surgery takes far longer than Rex’s own did, the medical droid not as advanced, no Ahsoka there to guide them to where the chip is, but by midday a relieved looking Suu gives them a call and tells them that all went well and that they’ll be home in time for dinner.   
  
Nobody can truly rest until Cut and Suu are home proper, though, Cut being reluctantly supported by Suu to the kitchen table, the bandage a shocking white against his brown skin. “I know you are relieved,” Suu tells the children, gently stroking each of their heads, “but I need you to keep your voices down while your father recovers. There will be time for questions. All right?”   
  
They eat in relative silence - Rex was in charge, which means that the fare is woefully simple, even with the kids’ help - but at some point, Rex nudges Cut’s knee with his own. “So?” He asks. “Feel any more aggressive than normal?”   
  
Cut laughs, then winces as it tugs at his wound, though he doesn’t seem terribly pressed by it. “If anything, Rex old boy, I’ve never felt less aggressive.”   
  
And so that was that.   
  


Cut stays in bed for a few more days. He protests, of course, but he’s forced to by wife and children alike. Rex vows to stay for as long as it takes for Cut to recover. He stays a few days longer when Cut returns to work part-time, musing that they could probably use an extra pair of hands until he’s back in fighting shape.  
  
Eventually Cut’s back to his old self again, working full-time on the farm and Rex needs to admit to himself that it’s time to leave. He and Cut are playing a game of Dejarik while Suu works closeby on some of their books when he says, delicately, “It seems that you’ve made a full recovery, Cut. How does it feel?”   
  
Cut grins at him. “I didn’t have to live with the knowledge for very long. But it's good to have it out. I feel the same as I ever did. I suppose I had nothing to worry about, eh, Rex?”   
  
“I’m glad to hear that. That means it’s about time for me to get out of your hair.”   
  
Cut raises a brow. “You don’t have to leave, you know.”   
  
Rex shakes his head. “I couldn’t possibly impose. Besides, it can’t be safe, two clones in the same location.”   
  
Suu turns to face them, arm flung idly around her chair. “You aren’t imposing. We could always use a capable pair of hands around here. And the children love you. I think they’ve been enjoying having someone around who hasn’t heard all their stories a hundred times before.”   
  
“You’re certain?” Rex asks.   
  
“Stay,” Suu says.   
  
“Checkmate,” Cut says with a satisfied smirk and Rex swears colourfully and that, it seems, is that.   
  
Rex doesn’t intend to stay for much longer. Just another couple of weeks, he tells himself, weeks where he can rest without having to watch his back, where he knows where his next meal is coming from, where he can enjoy being comfortable and well-fed and clean and -- liked. Loved, even, welcomed as a brother and uncle as only a hodge podge family like the Lawquanes could.   
  
He stays the rest of the season. He stays long enough to see Zillo grow and thrive, for some of that wide-eyed, velvet-furred appeal to wear off until Zillo’s just as ugly as the rest of the eopies, not that that he's any less loved for it. He stays long enough to gain favourite times in the day, pausing at just the right time to see the gold of the sun cast its light over the hills, making this farm look like it stretches on forever, as though there’s no other place in the galaxy.   
  
Things get better. Not always. Not all the time. There are still times when he freezes in the fields. Once some equipment backfired and he’d slammed himself to the ground, not sure of where he was or what he was doing until he was urged back to present day with Cut’s hand pressed firmly on his chest, Cut taking his hand and pressing it to his own chest saying, “Breathe, Rex, breathe with me.” There are still the nightmares, spectres of his brothers that haunt him until he wakes damp, a scream dying in his throat, reaching out for a brother that is no longer there.

But his shoulder’s gotten better, despite the yardwork. He finds himself smiling more. He finds himself meaning it when he smiles. And when he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t see a hollow man anymore, neither figuratively nor literally. There’s some meat on his bones, his skin dark and healthy after hours in the sun, not swathed away in disguises or armour. He sees a man that at least one other person in this cold galaxy calls brother, a man who’s known as uncle to two kids who’ve never really seen him as a soldier, just some eccentric old family member of their Dad’s. He winds up shaving his head again, lets his hair grow golden and long, because nobody’s seeing it anyway.  
  
It makes him feel like a man, same as any other man. And for a time, he is happy.

* * *

It doesn’t last forever.  
  
It’s no fault of Suu’s, nor Cut’s, nor, god forbid, Jek or Shaeeah. Once he starts feeling more like himself, though, Rex begins to see all the ways that he doesn’t belong here. He could doubtlessly live out the rest of his days here. He knows that Cut and Suu would graciously accept him here, as would the children, that perhaps one day, after one of the kids moved out, they would clear out one of their rooms. He could live and die in that room. He could live and die there quite happily.   
  
But every day he hears tales of the Empire’s treachery masked as victory. He finds himself frowning over the news more and more, staring heavily at the holos of the men, his men, carrying out things that they never would have before, captives of their own mind. When he’s sitting outdoors at night as he usually does, just getting some fresh air and privacy, he notices himself gazing up at the stars, itching to get back out there. He's getting fidgety, restless, his mind divided between his life here and the other responsibilities that have been weighing on him once more.   
  
After all, the only thing he’s ever wanted to be was a soldier. Not a farmer. It’s a good life. A humble life. And it suits Cut well. Rex, though, has other things he has to do. On one of those quiet nights, Cut comes and sits beside him, eyes following Rex’s gaze to where he’s staring out at the stars.   
  
“You’re thinking about leaving.”   
  
“I am,” Rex says. “It’s time.”   
  
“You could stay for longer. The galaxy’s not going anywhere. And it’s never done anything for you. You certainly don’t owe it any more of your life.”   
  
“Perhaps not,” he says, then looks at Cut with a sad smile. “But I owe my brothers a great deal more than I owe the galaxy. And they’re out there. I can’t abandon them now. Maybe I won’t be able to get close to most of them, but you’re not the only clone that deserted out there. You can’t be.”   
  
Cut hums. “You’re probably right. Anything I can do?”   
  
Rex tilts his head back. His face is bathed in starlight. “Did you keep that chip?”   
  
“I did.”   
  
“I’d like to have it, if you don’t mind. I think I’m going to start a collection. Those will be my droid fingers.”   
  


* * *

  
Rex stays another week before leaving.   
  
This time, things are different. He’s not trudging to his ship like he’s walking to his death, leaving behind lines and lines of the helmets of his dead brothers, blood and filth caked underneath his fingernails, the stench of death heavy in the air.   
  
This time, he walks to his ship accompanied by his family. The dirt embedded underneath his fingernails smells clean and fresh, from long days spent farming. They had pressed credits into his hand, and when he’d refused, said that it was merely minimum wage for his work on the farm. His pack is filled with rations, some of those preserves he’d spent so long sleeping beside, and at least one good meal he can have on the ride over there. He has clean, sturdy clothes, and a full belly, Cut’s shoulder bumping against his companionably on their way out.   
  
Suu presses a kiss to his cheek, her lips dry and cool against him. Quietly, she says to him, “I hope you find your Jedi.”   
  
He kneels before Jek and Shaeeah and gets a tight hug from each of them. When he turns to Cut and holds out his hand, he’s not altogether surprised when he gets pulled into a hug by him as well, an embrace that he lingers in, rocking slightly in place. Cut leans back, holding onto both of his shoulders.   
  
“You always have a place here. Come back whenever you like. When you need a place to rest your head for once, you come back here. You hear me?”   
  
“Loud and clear. Thank you. For everything.” Rex tugs at a chain around his neck, Cut’s chip looped on it. “Next time you see me, I’ll have added to the collection.”

Cut’s returning smile is warm. “I’m sure you will.”  
  
He leaves with a chorus of farewells in his ears. He sets his course for the nearest well-populated planet in hopes of doing a few odd jobs in exchange for information. All that’s left to do, as there ever is in space travel, is wait.   
  
Time moves by more swiftly with his collection of holonovels, but eventually that’s not enough, and he opens his pack with a wistful sort of air for his first meal in many moons alone, half-regretting leaving just for the food. He finds his dinner there, but he finds a few other things as well.   
  
Shaeeah’s training blaster. For if he ever needs to train somebody else, says a note, as she’s graduated to a real blaster by now. That book that Jek loves so much, pages dog-eared and notes written in the margins, though he explains that he’s getting the new edition soon. A box of light brown hair dye from Suu, which makes him chuckle and shake his head. And from Cut, a note, written in the strain of Mando’a only they can really understand.   
  
_You are not alone. You are merely marching far away._

**Author's Note:**

> I took some liberties with making the brain procedure a little more dramatic than it was in canon, mainly because getting brain surgery and then immediately fighting off an army seemed like an awful lot. I tried to justify it in text, so I hope it came off that I'm aware I fooled around with things a bit.
> 
> I know this was a lot of words for something in which not a lot happens (and the whole endeavor was mainly self-indulgent, as all fanfic should be), but I hope you enjoyed it anyway! I'm definitely open to writing more (though probably in a new fic, not a continuation of this one); there's just so much that goes unexplored between tcw and rebels.


End file.
